Malaysian Airliner missing?

[N747JB]

http://www.11alive.com/news/article...loses-contact-with-flight-carrying-239-people

 

[Jim Logajan]

Flight Aware track:

http://flightaware.com/live/flight_...dth=400&departuretime=1394210606&arrivaltime=

That track seems too short for the roughly 2 hours that reports seem to be claiming when comm/radar track was lost.

 

[Jim Logajan]

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2014-03/08/c_133170651.htm

"HANOI, March 8 (Xinhua) -- A Vietnamese official of search and rescue said Saturday that the signal of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane has been detected, local media reported.

The official told local VNExpress that the signal of the plane carrying 239 people has been detected at some 120 nautical miles southwest of Vietnam's southernmost Ca Mau province."

That would put the signal somewhere in the Gulf of Thailand.

 

[Jim Logajan]

No mayday is very troublesome. That is a very busy corridor, and they had full radar coverage from likely more than one source. Just vaporizing in cruise without a word gives me the willies.

If it was a terrorist bombing, the perps appear to be tardy in claiming responsibility. Also interesting that they got an ELT signal - how deep under water can an ELT be and its signal be picked up?

 

[Jim Logajan]

Well, they knew the airplane went down atleast.

In this case the airplane just disappeared. Literally without a trace, Bermuda Triangle style.

It really doesn't sit right with me at all.

It took a year to find Steve Fossett - and that happened only by chance.

 

[Jim Logajan]

Debris has really nothing to do with water depth.
If you don't have any floating debris the difficult task becomes almost impossible.

Speaking of floating debris - I would think an exploding aircraft would shower down a lot more items less dense than water than would be the case if an aircraft hit the water and pretty much stayed intact. But experts and pundits seem to be saying lack of debris suggests disintegration in midair. Unless they mean atomization?

 

[Jim Logajan]

From: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/b777-pilot-contacted-mh370-before-it-vanished-says-there-was-radio-interfer
A Boeing 777 pilot found "interference" when he was asked by Vietnamese air control to contact flight MH370 before the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER vanished from the air.

The captain, who was flying 30 minutes ahead of MH370, told the New Sunday Times that his Narita-bound plane was in Vietnamese airspace when he was asked to use his plane's emergency frequency to contact MH370 as air traffic control had lost contact.

"We managed to establish contact with MH370 just after 1.30am and asked them if they have transferred into Vietnamese airspace.

"The voice on the other side could have been either Captain Zaharie (Ahmad Shah, 53) or Fariq (Abdul Hamid, 27), but I was sure it was the co-pilot.

"There were a lot of interference... static... but I heard mumbling from the other end.

"That was the last time we heard from them, as we lost the connection," he was quoted as saying by the New Sunday Times.

 

[Jim Logajan]

Assuming passengers turned off their cell phones in flight for safety reasons, no one attempting to call them should get through regardless of alleged "ringing".

But if any of those cell phones is on and within range of a cell tower - well, it should be possible to locate the area the cell phone is in.

 

[Jim Logajan]

My theory, as crazy as it may sound, when you look at the facts, is not terribly far-fetched.

There are simple ways to transport a nuclear bomb or other WMD to the center of a populated target. But maybe the alleged terrorists couldn't afford to rent a U-Haul - or discovered that their insurance didn't cover biological or nuclear attack damage but didn't want to get stuck paying for damage to the rental truck. In that case it makes sense to hijack someone else's vehicle and use it for delivery.

 

[Jim Logajan]

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/0...ckpit-checked-in-12-minutes-after-course-was/

Already turned when the "good night" was given. I like the concept, but there are other closer airports on that route that were suitable. No need to cross the Kra peninsula for a runway.

An ACARS burst (the last one?) allegedly contained the info that an alternate route had been entered into the FMS. From http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/mi...-u-turn-programmed-signoff-sources-say-n56151
"Some pilots program an alternate flight plan in the event of an emergency," cautioned Greg Feith, a former National Transportation Safety Board crash investigator and NBC News analyst.
"We don't know if this was an alternate plan to go back to Kuala Lumpur or if this was to take the plane from some place other than Beijing," the doomed flight's intended destination, Feith said.
If it was an emergency route and the crew became incapacitated then the jet may have orbited the last entered waypoint till fuel exhaustion.

 

[Jim Logajan]

Orbited?
Per my understanding the jet will simply maintain the last heading/course (depending on the autopilot mode).

Could be.

Per some media outlet (latest headlines):

At 1:19 a.m. on March 8, 12 minutes after the plane had changed course to the west, co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid gave a routine "All right, good night" in his final radio call.

If the above is true this 'deviation' had nothing to do with any emergency.

The last ACARS transmission was reported as being at 1:07. Since the co-pilot transmission occurred 12 minutes later it may be that the two events are being conflated. I'm not sure, but I believe that since (or if) the ACARS messages were being transmitted every half hour, the ACARS message containing the information about the alternate course means the course was entered anytime between 12:37 and 1:07. The plane departed 12:41. But likely there was more ACARS chatter near takeoff, so maybe the alternate turn-back was entered shortly after takeoff.

 

[Jim Logajan]

Best timeline I've found is on pprune. Scroll down to the post by D.S. on 18th Mar 2014, 18:30 that begins "What we know* timeline":

http://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-535538-p-24.html

 

[Jim Logajan]

Don't use time as means of locating a post on pprune, for example for me it shows under "11:30", not 18:30. Use only the post number - this is the only reliable way of identifying a single post. In this case it is pot #5791.

Point noted. I had found the info on an archive link which isn't the best. I believe this link should take one directly to the post in the active thread:

http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost-290.html#post8386068

Lots of info posted to that thread - hard to tell the informed from the uninformed.